The social psychology of everyday life

Social psychology is strongly grounded in the experimental method for rigid theory testing. At same time, our discipline strives to generalize and fully understand social–psychological phenomena that manifest people’s everyday environments (“the field”). Whereas former requires optimizing internal validity, latter high external particularly ecological validity (representativeness of situations). To make most discipline, we need not only strong experimentation, but also powerful approaches capture scrutinize quintessential element, psychological situation field. Here, present one such field research approach, called SIP, designed complement strengths social psychology. It consists three core features: intensive sampling Situations ecologies, an Integrative approach unite multiple relevant key constructs levels analysis (e.g., person situation) under working framework, a Phenomenon-driven, open orientation towards topic at hand. We illustrate opportunities (and challenges) provided by SIP with several insights derived from program applying various areas as self-control, morality, trust. These include (a) value description, (b) benefits situations continuous multi-dimensional manner, (c) better understanding temporal dynamics processes, (d) potential study person–environment relations (such selection effects), (e) new ways mapping correspondence between paradigms environments. features can improve building creating stronger symbiosis lab